Are the 9/11 museum's commemorative toys and hoodies a step too far?

Early visitors to the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York have complained about the merchandise for sale in the shop. But it's not the first museum to tread a delicate line in souvenirs

9/11 Memorial Museum merchandise.

There is a gift shop at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, which opens this week in New York. Should that be surprising? It is a museum, after all, a place that will no doubt be visited by many tourists who will want to take home souvenirs. The exhibition also needs their money, on top of what it receives in donations and admission fees, in order to meet the $63m annual cost of staying open. Even on a project of such sensitivity, this must have seemed like common sense at the planning stage.

Some of the early visitors, however, who come from among those with a personal connection to 9/11, do not see it that way. "I think it's a money-making venture to support inflated salaries," Diane Horning told the New York Post, "and they're willing to do it over my son's dead body." In this case, those words are almost literally true. The museum is built underground beside a "remains repository" containing roughly 8,000 unidentified body parts, quite possibly including Horning's son Matthew, whose remains were never found.

What's actually on sale in the gift shop is another tricky matter. In places, it seems to turn remembering 9/11 into something like a fashion statement. There is the black twin towers hoodie emblazoned with the words, "In darkness we shine brightest" ($39). There is the silk scarf printed with a full-colour twin towers design ($95). There is even the Search & Rescue Dog cuddly toy ($19.95). Whether anybody buys these items, we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, and in the new museum's defence, it is worth noting that this is far from the first commemorative gift shop in the world.

Here are four more museums with a sensitive line in souvenirs:

Auschwitz-Birkenau

At the scene of perhaps the greatest atrocity in living memory, and indeed online at the official Auschwitz website, you can buy memorial CDs and DVDs, postcards, books and posters. This strikes some people as odd, but it is done quite solemnly, and the items are solely educational. There is certainly nothing you can wear.

Imperial War Museum

Get the 'wartime expereince' at the Imperial War Museum.

Besides keeping lots of old tanks and guns, at least part of the IWMs' remit is to document the "wartime experience", including life on the home front. As a result, in the gift shop you can spend £10 on a "vintage Marmite cake tin" or even a "retro alarm clock", in a choice of red or green.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Along with a peace park and some truly horrifying exhibits, there is a gift shop on the site of the nuclear explosion that killed more than 100,000 people in 1945. There are books, of course, but there are alsopeace-themed souvenirs and T-shirts.

The Museum of the Great War

Books about the first world war are the main theme in Péronne in northern France, near the site of the Battle of the Somme. There are also posters and DVDs, however, and even model aircraft and toy soldiers.